


Waverly

by wildechilde17



Series: The business trilogy [9]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Advent Calendar, Clint Barton's Farm, F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8741797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: Third day of Advent prompts: Days off





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiss_me_cassie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiss_me_cassie/gifts), [AlphaFlyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaFlyer/gifts).



He started fixing the house when his wound had healed and they forget to stop him leaving. He bought cans of heavy white paint, sandpaper, a ladder that claimed to be the apex of ladder technology. He threw himself into repairing what he could.

She follows him two days later.

And two days after she arrives, she sits between his legs in front of a laptop playing a stolen movie’s credits.

"You really intend to fix this place," she says of the old farm house, absently patting the floorboards he had sanded down the day before.

"You think," he says, "I should burn it down and walk away in slow motion with a gas tank exploding behind me."

"Hardly," she snorts derisively, "human bodies are failures in close proximity to explosions"

"And this is why we end up watching rom coms," he crows, dragging himself up right and groans once over the creak of joints annoyed that he is making them move.  "This," he points at her still seated on the unpolished floor, all wide green eyes and bed hair. "This nitpicking, angry commentary."

"You'd prefer to watch Tom Cruise and his latest band of flunkies survive massive vertical drops because of airbag technology?" she says, not scrambling to follow him into the nearby kitchen.

"Noooo," he answers leaning around the door frame, "no, I prefer watching whatsherface put on one hundred and one ugly dresses for cyclops to moon over."

He never asks her to follow him, he never tells her to come. The credits continue scrolling the score becoming a sappy love ballad with a soaring hopeful chorus.

She jumps from her seated position at that, hands on hips like an uncomfortably attractive Peter Pan and calls out a triumphant single "Ha!"

"What?" He frowns, pausing at wiping his hands on paper towels.

"You do," she says, stalking towards him. "You would!" She is giddy with her declaration, "I saw it   this time." She wiggles her fingertips in the vicinity of his eyes and forehead. "You like the rom coms."

"I do not." Clint rolls his eyes leaving her vibrating with silly elation in the other room. "I just can't stand ...."

"The fact that Tom Hanks stopped making movies where he falls in love with Meg Ryan."

"When do you have to go back to camp Avengers again?"

He turns from the sink, she is standing in the room they have taken to calling the front room. She entered silently under the cover of outrageous accusations.

"We didn't watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," she says like even its name makes her laugh, "because the archery at least makes it watchable, we watched it because you love that moment Marian screams 'ROBIN!!'"

"Keep telling yourself that," he huffs tiredly.

"Admit it."

"No."

"Do I need to..." she says in a voice that drips with Bond villain torture plots, he vaults the counter top before she has a chance to list the many ways she would make him talk.

She doesn't looked shocked in the instant before he lifts her. He suspects this was her plan all along but as plans go it is not their worst.

"Stop! Stop, put me down," she yells. And he would in a second if her heart rate changed, if she shifted her position in his arms, if he thought for a moment she really wanted him to. "You'll start leaking again," she insists.

He slips his fingertips beneath the thin white t-shirt she is wearing, loose and yet contoured enough that he knows it isn't one she has stolen. Her breathing changes, she kicks. "Clint Barton if you tickle me this will not go well for you. You..."

"When has anything gone well for me?"

"No,” she insists again as his right hand climbs, “Don't you dare!"

“Why? You're not ticklish are you?” She leans into him, hands on his shoulders, balanced like the ballerina she was.

In answer she presses her forehead against his, leaving little distance between their eyes, “The last man who tried to tickle me is in several unmarked graves.”

He raises his eyebrows, “You are! A ticklish spider. How did I not know that?”

“Don't!” she cries again when his hand journeys upwards, “No! Okay, okay. I'll make a deal,” she pleads. He doesn’t believe her pleading. He would have been dead from several panic induced heart attacks long ago if he couldn’t discern the fiction of Natasha Romanoff from the heart of her.

He lets her drop regardless. “No tickling,” she offers, pushing his hand from beneath her clothing, her eyes never leaving his face. “And Tony Stark never finds out that you hold your breath at the end of ‘Never been kissed’.”

“Mutually assured destruction.”

“Cold War politics is us, ястреб,” she answers, her lower lip is stained from pressing it between her teeth. 

“I admit nothing but you've got your deal, Khrushchev.”

He offers her his hand. She does not take it instead leaning in and pressing a single finger to his sternum. “I will wash, you will dry.”

He chuckles, “That's the best you can do? I thought I'd get a ‘we will bury you’ at least.”

She shrugs and turns towards the kitchen sink, “It was a poor translation and you hate drying.”

He rubs his hand back over his hair, “Hey Tasha?”

“Mm mhm?” she replies over the sound of the running water. 

“I'd watch you try on twenty seven ugly dresses.”  His voice is low and she has to turn to be sure he said it.

“I knew it!” Her eyes grow large as though she didn’t already know everything about him. “You....”

“You are beautiful when you are victorious.”

He doesn’t offer that truth very often. She doesn’t care about her beauty any more than she cares about Tom Cruise and his hanging off airplanes in carefully controlled conditions. And it isn’t really what he means, he means that she is truly herself in his barely functional kitchen, yelling her triumph to the empty environs like figuring out he is a romantic at heart is akin to defeating hydra.

“You...” she begins but stops when he shakes his head, a smile in his eyes. 

Natasha Romanoff throws a dishcloth at his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Well I have managed to write this and do none, absolutely none of my actual work.


End file.
